Dan Petrovich draws upon his knowledge of advanced optimisation techniques, link building tactics and technical excellence to bring us his answers to the following questions.

SEO experts have used the term “content is king.”

Does this mean website owners should focus more on on-site optimization and creating valuable content than off-site optimization and link building, or are the two equally important?

This question is part of the problem. If you have good content, links will come naturally and there will be no need for link building.

Google never anticipated webmasters would one day use “link building” as part of their mainstream marketing activities, and they expect our links to happen naturally as an objective endorsement signal.

Since webmasters now know that links impact rankings, this model is compromised and websites with natural links can no longer compete against those who proactively seek links.

So what is the solution? Don’t create average content; create extraordinary content. By “content,” I mean more than just text – I mean every available media.

Many estimates claim Google only makes up about 70% of search engine traffic.

Should businesses optimize their websites for other search engines as well to gain additional traffic?

Good SEO practices go beyond a single search engine and optimising for one likely means you’re covered for many.

Different search engines may treat different signals with varying degrees of importance, but best practices in terms of accessibility, content and user experience are universal. At Dejan SEO, we tend to focus on Google due to a very high percentage of users in Australia (some claim it’s over 90%).

On your website, you refer to using different search engine verticals to monitor opportunities for your clients.

What is a search engine vertical, and how can it help a business generate more traffic?

Search results are growing in complexity, and there are numerous ways search engines cater to different types of search intent.

For example, if you search for “Norah Jones,” you are likely to get images and videos blended within results; however, if you type in “Digital Camera,” shopping results might pop in as well.

Today, users have a choice of slicing the search in many ways in the hope of getting results that answer their questions more accurately:

Knowing where the opportunities are comes from thorough research, and spending a few hours on investigating different search verticals is a good idea when forming an SEO strategy for a client.

Keyword research is obviously a crucial part of SEO.

Should website owners invest in special tools such as Keyword Samurai to do keyword research, or is the Google Adwords Keyword tool sufficient?

Google provides an excellent tool for keyword research, and I encourage all webmasters to use it all the time. Google Webmaster Tools contains a wealth of information about the website, and if you know where to look, you can get hold of some excellent data.

We employ our own methodology for phrase research in terms of existing opportunities:

Benefits:

• Discovering Quick Wins
• Getting Your Priorities Right
• Better Expectations
• Going Beyond Analytics Data (with impressions)

Detriments:

• Excludes non-ranking keywords
• Very difficult to handle by hand (we have a custom program that does this on a mass-scale)

Dan, you provide many Internet marketing services beyond SEO (PPC, social media optimization etc.). However, SEO seems to be your firm’s main focus.

Is this because you feel that SEO is the most essential tool for promoting a website?

Dejan SEO is a recognised SEO brand, and I am hesitant to shift our place in the market too rapidly. The work we do already goes far beyond SEO, and our greatest asset is our ability to form solid strategy from the research we perform.

In my opinion, SEO is an important part of the online marketing mix, but other elements cannot be ignored or treated separately.

Does the old adage “cheaters never prosper” apply to black hat SEO?

In other words, is it a much better idea to use white hat SEO practices in the long run?

There is no such thing as black hat and white hat SEO. There are spammers and hackers with malicious intent, and there are those who are simply doing what they think will help their rankings. Some like to push the boundaries to see what happens; others sit and patiently wait for results to happen.

Once you’re in breach of search engine’s guidelines, you are qualified for filter and penalty actions. Some get away with it; some get caught. Being aggressive can sometimes bring good results, but doing things by the book means you can sleep at night knowing your position is rock solid.

Do you feel that older link building practices such as article marketing and blog commenting are becoming obsolete?

Are there newer link building strategies website owners should use to best their competition?

Although outdated, article marketing and blog commenting are no different from good old link exchange (which is now a truly ancient method of acquiring links). If you do it right, it will work for you; if you automate it and don’t care about quality, it will bring very little value.

My favorites are content-related tactics – in particular, viral and link bait techniques. Infographics are overdone already, and I am keeping those at a minimum. The key with link building is not to go for high quantities, but rather, focus on fewer, higher-quality links. The best links are the links you don’t ask for.

Many Internet marketers feel there is a debate between the effectiveness of SEO and social media marketing.

Do you feel that social media and SEO can be used cohesively together?

For example, is it a good idea to use social media websites to build links to your website?

I think of SEO as a marketing channel, and social media as a platform. We use social media daily and make no distinction between the two. It’s important to integrate all aspects of your online marketing strategy into one unit and bring different departments together to talk to each other (PR, social, SEO, PPC, etc).

Many webmasters focus on building PageRank to improve their search engine rankings.

However, Google itself says PageRank is only a small factor that affects rankings.

Should online businesses change their focus away from pagerank and more towards building relevant, anchored backlinks?

PageRank has been downplayed by many webmasters and even by Google; however, it remains a foundation of Google’s algorithm. Here is an interesting article which explains Google’s latest efforts to supercharge PageRank: http://dejanseo.com.au/relationships-in-large-scale-graph-computing/

My advice is not to ignore this metric, just like you would not ignore any other search engine signal. It is, however, the only visible and clear signal coming directly from Google, so it’s easy to understand why so many webmasters become obsessed with it (and in the process, annoy everyone else by raving about it).

In this video, I explain a bit more about PageRank: http://dejanseo.com.au/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-pagerank-but-were-afraid-to-ask/

What do you feel is more important: having backlinks that are relevant to your content, or having the keywords in the anchor text of the backlink?

Obviously, it’s best to have both, but what would you prefer if you had to choose one or the other?

After extensive testing, I’m not convinced that Google is very appreciative of link relevance at this stage, and anchor text is not what it used to be. I would select a third option – authoritative and trusted links from relevant context, regardless of the topic of the website.

For example, I am happy to receive a link from a university page that speaks about a recent event I attended and reviewed.

Example: http://app.griffith.edu.au/03/lib-blog/?p=1012

Many marketers have said there is an optimal “keyword density” they should use to make sure their webpages rank well.

Is there really a formula for deciding how many times to use a keyword in a page of content?

Also, is it true that Google would rather see websites use synonyms than large numbers of keywords, so that the content reads more naturally?

Keyword density is a myth. On a daily basis, I see websites that rank for stuff they don’t even mention on the page or that they mention only once.

There are many other factors that play a role, including synonyms and link signals. Don’t believe me? Search for ‘photocopiers’ in Google Australia and observe the first result.

Are meta descriptions and meta keywords useless now for SEO?

Meta keywords are completely ignored by Google while the meta description is one of my highest priorities, and I sometimes spend hours in the SERP preview tool (http://dejanseo.com.au/serp-preview-tool/) crafting the right content for it.

Dejan SEO is an Australian Search Engine Optimisation company known for advanced optimisation techniques, link building tactics and technical excellence.

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